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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. This is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today's Vault episode

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Speaker 1: is going to be called Melt with Me. This one

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Speaker 1: originally published November five. It's all about melting. Yeah, it's uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, we get into you know, phase transition, and

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Speaker 1: we talk a little bit about movies that feature people melting.

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Speaker 1: Is I recall this one kind of gets There's some

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Speaker 1: science in here, for sure, but it's also kind of

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Speaker 1: a free form uh you know, philosophical uh, pondering of

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Speaker 1: melting people and what they mean. Why do we keep

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Speaker 1: coming back to this idea of melting and is it good?

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Speaker 1: Is it bad? Is it both? We'll let you decide.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: Mine name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

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Speaker 1: Halloween Hangover Week continues. Rob today, I think you wanted

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Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about melting. Yeah. So basically

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Speaker 1: the reason for this episode is that we are publishing

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Speaker 1: this the first week of November, but we were recording

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Speaker 1: at the last week of October, so we didn't want

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Speaker 1: to work on any non Halloween material the week of Halloween.

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Speaker 1: Uh So Halloween on the show is lasting an extra week.

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Speaker 1: Uh So we're going to get into some topics here

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Speaker 1: that are a little bit horror themed in places, but

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Speaker 1: also I think go beyond horror and maybe just get

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Speaker 1: into a study of a very particular symbol or metaphor

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Speaker 1: in the human experience and a discussion of what it means.

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Speaker 1: You know, one of the first movies we talked about

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Speaker 1: in October this year, I think it was the first

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Speaker 1: one was was the House of Wax movie starring Vincent Price.

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Speaker 1: So we did a whole episode about wax horror. And

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Speaker 1: one of the things that you see time and again

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Speaker 1: in these wax murder movies is there's the scene where

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Speaker 1: the Palace of Wax burns down and you watch all

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Speaker 1: of the wax figures melting. Uh It's got to happen

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Speaker 1: in every one of these stories, and there's clearly some

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Speaker 1: kind of psychological thing going on where the imagery they're

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Speaker 1: is supposed to resemble human beings actually melting, and that's

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Speaker 1: what the fascination is in. But another thing about it

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Speaker 1: that just recently struck me as a reason to have

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Speaker 1: those wax figure melting scenes is it's almost like a

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Speaker 1: way of sneaking in gore extra gore around the sensors.

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Speaker 1: Like if you couldn't get a melting human past you know,

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Speaker 1: the m P A A or whatever, you probably can

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Speaker 1: get some melting humanoid wax figures. Yeah. I wonder, like

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Speaker 1: how much violence and gore involving a clear um mannequin

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Speaker 1: or wax figure, you know, just a pure effigy could

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Speaker 1: you get away with? Uh? I mean to a certain extent.

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Speaker 1: You see that with other things, right, Like you hear

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Speaker 1: about movies where they're like, oh, yeah, we decided that

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Speaker 1: the monster or the villain should have green blood because

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Speaker 1: then we can use as much as we want. But

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Speaker 1: if it were red, we couldn't show it. That sort

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Speaker 1: of thing. So but yeah, I think, you know, it

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Speaker 1: kind of it ties back to a lot of the

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Speaker 1: themes that we talked about in the wax episode, you know,

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Speaker 1: like what happens when we watch violence involving an effigy

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Speaker 1: or some sort of sacrament involving an effigy. Uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: we we can't help but associate then those movements violent

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Speaker 1: or otherwise with the person that it is resembling or

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Speaker 1: like just a human in general. Uh. And it's it's

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Speaker 1: fitting that we kicked off our Halloween season this year

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Speaker 1: with Wax and we're going to close it out with

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Speaker 1: the Melt. Now, there are a couple of ways you

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Speaker 1: could look at this. One I think is just there

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Speaker 1: is a good melting scene in a movie, such as

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Speaker 1: in Raiders of the Lost Arc has a famous classic

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Speaker 1: Nazi melting scene. But then on the other end of

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Speaker 1: the spectrum, you can you can go, you can really

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Speaker 1: embrace it to the the nth degree and go full

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Speaker 1: melt movie, which is a sort of sub genre of

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Speaker 1: its own, of like horror, gore, gross out films that

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Speaker 1: are all just about people melting. Well. It's it's kind

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Speaker 1: of the difference between a like a blockbuster like Raiders,

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Speaker 1: and a smaller picture or a B picture, right like

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Speaker 1: Raiders is a film that does a lot of things

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Speaker 1: exceedingly well, and one of them is the use of

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Speaker 1: a practical special effect to make it look like someone's melting.

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Speaker 1: But a lot of times with these b with a

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Speaker 1: B film, you know you're lucky if you get one

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Speaker 1: thing that's done really well, and sometimes like that is

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Speaker 1: the that is the push with the film, like that

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Speaker 1: is the energy of the film, Like, look, we can

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Speaker 1: do a really good melting scene. Let's build a movie

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Speaker 1: around our ability to do this, or at least our

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Speaker 1: desire to do this. You know. Well, it's kind of

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Speaker 1: like how a B movie can maybe have a budget

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Speaker 1: for one star, so you can just get Vincent Price

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Speaker 1: or something, and then you try to build it around

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Speaker 1: that star. Or maybe if you just have a budget

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Speaker 1: for a really good makeup perfects artists, then you build

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Speaker 1: the whole film around that. Yeah, exactly, and and in

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Speaker 1: many cases that that can be enough. Um. I also

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Speaker 1: think it's certainly a case, especially with some of these

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Speaker 1: earlier pictures we're talking about, where they they strike a

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Speaker 1: chord and they they for Like, there's something about the

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Speaker 1: melting human that resonates strongly with us and makes us

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Speaker 1: want to go back and re examine it. Maybe not

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Speaker 1: so deeply certainly with some of these films, but we

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Speaker 1: have to come back for more. There's just something intriguing

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Speaker 1: about about the melting human. And I think a lot

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Speaker 1: of it does go back to wax effigies and some

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Speaker 1: of the things we discussed in that past episode. But

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Speaker 1: in terms of just the cinnamon that we grow up

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Speaker 1: on for my own part, and I feel like other

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Speaker 1: people probably share this cinematic legacy as well. I think

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Speaker 1: of Raiders of course from eighty one, which we just

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Speaker 1: just discussed. But the other big one, of course is

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Speaker 1: The Wizard of Oz, which is not the goryous scene ever,

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Speaker 1: but a very memorable scene often seen at a young

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Speaker 1: age for the first time, in which the wicked Witch

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Speaker 1: of the West is splashed with water and melts away

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Speaker 1: into like smoking nothingness. The feeling of that scene is

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Speaker 1: very much defined by the fact that it's water that

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Speaker 1: does it. If it had been sulfuric acid or something

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Speaker 1: that supposedly melts her, that scene would be more horrific,

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Speaker 1: But the fact that she's melted by water gives it

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Speaker 1: a fairy tale kind of quality that actually makes it

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Speaker 1: less body horrific, less gruesome, and more magical and and

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Speaker 1: like something that would happen in a grim's fairy tale. Yeah, yeah, exactly,

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Speaker 1: something that the purity of water is the only thing

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Speaker 1: you could destroy such a like a foul creature, right though,

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Speaker 1: that would be a hilarious ending to the movie where

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Speaker 1: they find out the secret is you've got to throw

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Speaker 1: sulfuric acid on the witch. Alright, well, we're gonna we're

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Speaker 1: gonna get more into the contemplative part of this podcast

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Speaker 1: in a bit, but we need to go ahead and

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Speaker 1: talk about a few other melt movies before we move forward,

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Speaker 1: just to establish the firm ground upon which we're going

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Speaker 1: to build everything else. And I think one of the

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Speaker 1: one of the big ones is all I don't know,

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Speaker 1: maybe for some of you have never heard of it,

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Speaker 1: but a big one for me is seven The Incredible

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Speaker 1: Melting Man. Then the plot here is, uh, it was

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Speaker 1: not original to this picture. There have been some There's

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Speaker 1: been at least one other film, probably more before it

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Speaker 1: that explored a similar contemplation, and that is, Uh, you

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Speaker 1: have an astronaut goes into space, is exposed to cosmic radiation,

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Speaker 1: and he brings this home. In this case, the radiation

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Speaker 1: has caused him to melt, and he can slow down

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Speaker 1: this melting by eating human flesh, and he also has

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Speaker 1: radioactive powers. If I'm remembering correctly, Uh, seems kind of

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Speaker 1: similar to the plot of Monster A Go Go, if

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Speaker 1: I recall correct Yeah, And I think there's um, there's

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Speaker 1: a there's a move with Frankenstein in the title that

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Speaker 1: has a similar element, like like clearly meets the space monster.

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Speaker 1: Is that I think it had a similar plot. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I think there are more films because obviously you

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Speaker 1: you're dealing with the this this one is perhaps the

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Speaker 1: kind of an homage to the radioactive cinema of the

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Speaker 1: previous decades. And like this was on everybody's mind in

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Speaker 1: the post war period in the in the shadow of

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Speaker 1: the Mushroom Cloud, you know, this was these were the

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Speaker 1: kinds of of of myths we kept stirring up. Now,

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Speaker 1: many of you probably know this film because it was

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Speaker 1: featured on Mystery Science Theater three thousand back in the day.

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Speaker 1: And the other thing that's really key about it is

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Speaker 1: that the legendary Rick Baker did effects on it, and

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Speaker 1: the effects are quite terrifying. Of these this like melting Man.

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Speaker 1: It's just kind of like perpetually melting despite throughout the film.

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Speaker 1: Um and uh, maybe in part because of the effectiveness

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Speaker 1: of those effects. This this is what started out as

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Speaker 1: an intended horror parody became a straight horror film. Like

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Speaker 1: the producers apparently took comedic scenes out of the picture

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Speaker 1: in order to emphasize the horror. Uh. That's something about

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Speaker 1: the melting man, especially when depicted convincingly through you know,

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Speaker 1: someone's worth like Rick Baker's, that you just can't ignore.

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Speaker 1: Movies don't usually go that way during direction. It's much

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Speaker 1: more common for them to go the other way, where

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Speaker 1: you embrace comedy and add more comedy in Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: like this looks this look looks dumb. Let's have it

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Speaker 1: up a little bit. Let's pretend like we meant to

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Speaker 1: do this. Uh. An interesting fact about the melt effects

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Speaker 1: in this film. Um, the Rick big Baker films apparently

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Speaker 1: inspired uh, the effects in RoboCop. You know, there's an

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Speaker 1: infamous scene in RoboCop where one of the hinchmen gets

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Speaker 1: toxic waste of splattered all over them and they started melting. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: a scene that really shook me when I saw it

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Speaker 1: way too early in my life. Children should not watch RoboCop. No,

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Speaker 1: not at all. So in these two previous examples, we

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Speaker 1: mentioned the melt almost being in parody, uh, or you know,

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Speaker 1: in the case of RoboCop playing into sort of an

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Speaker 1: ultra violent satire of American culture. But there are more

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Speaker 1: comedic examples to consider as well. One of them I

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Speaker 1: believe you've seen this, and I think we've talked about

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Speaker 1: this and before Joe, but Street Trash, it's been a

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Speaker 1: long time since I saw but my my friend Ben

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Speaker 1: showed it to me many many years ago, and it

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Speaker 1: is that is a absolutely grotesque film of the highest order. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it is a it's a I guess it's supposed to

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Speaker 1: be a black comedy. Uh, you know, it's filled with gallows, humor,

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Speaker 1: um and just just atrocities. It's just an atrocious film

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Speaker 1: you should not watch unless you were into atrocious nineteen

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Speaker 1: eight cinema, even less for children than RoboCop. Yeah, it's uh,

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Speaker 1: it is just wall to wall humans melting and disgusting nastiness. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But the the the key melt and it has a

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Speaker 1: fabulous melt scene in It involves this this plot element

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Speaker 1: where there's this cheap liquor that's going around. I think

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Speaker 1: it's called like Tina fly Viper. Yeah. They find it

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Speaker 1: in the basement of a liquor store and start selling

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Speaker 1: it and it makes people melt. Yeah. Like there's a

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Speaker 1: scene where a like a homeless individual or a hobo

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Speaker 1: or or something, um it gets a bottle of this

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Speaker 1: starts drinking and then starts melting whilst sitting on a

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Speaker 1: like a a discarded toilet out in a junk field,

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Speaker 1: and he melts into the toilet and then goes down

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Speaker 1: the toilet bowl. But they do it in a way

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Speaker 1: where it's like, it's not like a purely gory melt

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Speaker 1: like it has. It's kind of a technicolor melt, so

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Speaker 1: it's not actually as bloody or gross as I'm making

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Speaker 1: it sound. It's more surreal and comic. Bookie, Well, it

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Speaker 1: is gross, but as he melts into the toilet, he's

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Speaker 1: turning Lisa Frank colors, so he's like blue and green

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Speaker 1: and pink as he melts. Now, another movie that has, uh,

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Speaker 1: if not absolute melting, something very much like melting troll

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Speaker 1: To from Ah Yes where uh So, I watched troll

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Speaker 1: To probably at least fifty times when I was in college.

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Speaker 1: But it's weird because now it's been a while since

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Speaker 1: I've seen it. We're we're about to rewatch it for

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Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema. But what I recall is there's like

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Speaker 1: nilbog milk in this town full of goblins, and when

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Speaker 1: people drink it or eat the food they're or whatever,

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Speaker 1: it is they get poisoned and then their bodies are

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Speaker 1: reduced to this kind of green sap as they slowly

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Speaker 1: turned into plants and green jello, and they become food

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Speaker 1: for vegetarian goblins pretty much. Yeah. So if that sounds intriguing, Uh,

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Speaker 1: pay attention to our feed. We'll come back and discuss

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Speaker 1: it in in full. Into a little bit. Another melt movie,

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Speaker 1: this one from the eighties is the Stuff. This one

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Speaker 1: is by the Master Larry Cohen, starring Saturday Night Live's

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Speaker 1: Garrett Morris. And this is one I haven't actually seen,

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Speaker 1: but I have seen the key melting scene in it,

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Speaker 1: in which Garrett Morris kind of mutate slash slash melts

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Speaker 1: into a big blob of killer cool whip. If I recall,

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Speaker 1: the real moral of the stuff is that you need

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Speaker 1: a strong f DA with good inspection provisions and regulations

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Speaker 1: on consumer goods, because I think it's like a packaged

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Speaker 1: yogurt product or something like that that ends up turning

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Speaker 1: people into into liquid and that Let's see, what are

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Speaker 1: some other melt films that come to mind? Um, or

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Speaker 1: at least scenes that have films that have good melt

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Speaker 1: scenes in them. Uh, these are all played for straight horror.

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Speaker 1: But there's the Devil's Rain, that's where the rain melts

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Speaker 1: the Satanist. There's some melting in the Evil Dead. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: the Gremlins movies have some fabulous melting. Warlock has a

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Speaker 1: melt scene. As I recall, The Blob is actually a

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Speaker 1: wonderful melt film, and that not only is the Blob

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Speaker 1: itself very amorphous and melty, but it's it's always just

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Speaker 1: any time it gets a person, it starts melting and

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Speaker 1: it starts dissolving them, digesting them, uh, in real grotesque time. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the Blob, I think is a is an underrated type

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Speaker 1: of horror because something you know, if we were like

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Speaker 1: smaller types of animals, there could be real blob type

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Speaker 1: horror to worry about in the real world. I don't

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Speaker 1: think there are any major predators that would, uh, that

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Speaker 1: would prey on a human sized organism by digesting it

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Speaker 1: externally with enzymes. But that happens all the time to

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Speaker 1: you know, smaller types of creatures in the ocean or

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Speaker 1: in the like insect world. I mean basically, a lot

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Speaker 1: of what a spider does to you if it catches

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Speaker 1: you is it will sort of spit enzymes into you

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Speaker 1: that dissolve your inner body parts, melt them and turn

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Speaker 1: them into a soup that the spider can suck out

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Speaker 1: of you. Do you remember the of I know the

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Speaker 1: answer to this. I know you remember these guys. But

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Speaker 1: the winged creatures and Beastmaster. Yes, they do a form

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Speaker 1: of external digestion on the creatures they catch. They like

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Speaker 1: wrap them in their big wings and then they just

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Speaker 1: like turned to jelly and then presumably they eat at

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Speaker 1: least some of the jelly. Nice um. Other films, let's see,

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Speaker 1: take more of a weird sci fi approach to melting.

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Speaker 1: A time cop which we've we've mentioned on the show before,

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Speaker 1: features a great melt seat when a character comes into

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Speaker 1: physical contact with their past self. Uh, they melt away

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Speaker 1: into nothingness together. I'm not sure exactly c g I

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Speaker 1: melt scene. Yeah, it's the c g I melt scene,

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Speaker 1: which doesn't hold up as well today, but at the

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Speaker 1: time was was pretty crazy. As I recall all, c

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Speaker 1: G I seemed like that in the nineties. You remember

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Speaker 1: when we were all saying how good the c G

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Speaker 1: I and Mortal Kombat the motion picture was. What's the

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Speaker 1: other films that come to mind? Toxic Avenger has some

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Speaker 1: melting in it. Um Society by Brian Jasna is another

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Speaker 1: sort of video nasty that has a certain amount of

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Speaker 1: orgiastic melting between characters, pet characters melting into each other, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: There's a really spectacular melting scene in Fright Night where

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Speaker 1: the vampire is familiar in that movie. So the vampires

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Speaker 1: Chris Sourrandon, but he's got this apparently human helper named Billy.

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Speaker 1: Uh And this is I don't know, there's something in

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Speaker 1: a lot of vampire movies have as like the vampire

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Speaker 1: can't go out in the daytime, so he's got a

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Speaker 1: helper who goes out and does stuff with him or

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Speaker 1: does to forum during the day. For example, in Um

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Speaker 1: in Salem's Lot, this is the characters straight Acre, who's

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Speaker 1: played by uh oh, what's his name, James Mason. There's

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Speaker 1: just wonderful in the role, you know, back Priest, back Shaman.

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Speaker 1: But but in this movie, the James Mason role is

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Speaker 1: I can't remember the actor's name who plays him, but

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Speaker 1: the character's name is Billy. And later in the film,

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Speaker 1: when the when the characters start fighting Billy, I think

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Speaker 1: they shoot him with a revolver, and they discover he's

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Speaker 1: not quite human at all actually, or if he is human,

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Speaker 1: he's cursed in some kind of way, because after he

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Speaker 1: has killed, he melts into a green puddle of bones

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Speaker 1: and goo. Real quick, is it? Roddy McDowell, No, No,

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Speaker 1: Roddy McDowell plays the Peter Cushing character in the movie.

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Speaker 1: He plays an actor who regularly plays Van Helsing type

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Speaker 1: roles in films within the film. I just looked him up.

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Speaker 1: The actor's name is Jonathan Stark. Looks like he's also

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Speaker 1: in house to the second story and in an episode

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Speaker 1: of Tales from the Crypt. Maybe we'll have to come

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Speaker 1: back to that another time. Now. Another film that some

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Speaker 1: of you might be thinking of that involves like nell

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Speaker 1: being external digestion, etcetera, is, of course David Cronenberg's The Fly,

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Speaker 1: which we we recently did or sometime earlier this year

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Speaker 1: we did an episode on particularly we we discussed the

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Speaker 1: themes of the plasma pool uh in that picture, because

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Speaker 1: I I think David Cronenberg's film here is worth focusing on,

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Speaker 1: because certainly there's a lot of meltish body heart that's

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Speaker 1: going on in that film. Characters basically rotting and falling apart, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: But the Brundle character brings up this idea of the

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Speaker 1: plasma pool is this thing to to dive into and

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Speaker 1: be reborn out off which itself is. I think nicely

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Speaker 1: represents the other side of of the coin with our

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Speaker 1: idea of melting, uh, because it brings with it again

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Speaker 1: the idea of rebirth. And we see a version of

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Speaker 1: this in the natural world as well. It's not all

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Speaker 1: just amba's digesting things. We also see um this jellification

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Speaker 1: and this this melting and then rebirth in metamorphosis. So

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Speaker 1: we often don't realize this, But but what a caterpillar

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Speaker 1: does inside a chrystalis coccoon is essentially a full body melt.

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Speaker 1: It digests itself, It releases enzymes that dissolve almost all

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Speaker 1: of its tissues, reducing itself to an oozing goop. Only

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Speaker 1: the imaginal discs survived this process, and these develop into

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Speaker 1: the adult body parts of the mature butterfly or moth

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Speaker 1: that ultimately emerges. So again, the larval form must melt

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Speaker 1: before it becomes an adult. It must be granted within

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Speaker 1: the protective frame of the crystalis or cocoon it must

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Speaker 1: give up all of its hard exteriors, It must liquefy,

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Speaker 1: undergo a self digestion, become an ouze, and then that

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Speaker 1: ouze becomes the butterfly. It is weird to think about,

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Speaker 1: if you focus on it for a second, that across

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Speaker 1: every generation of humans, the body plan has to return

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Speaker 1: to a mass of undifferentiated cells that you know, you

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Speaker 1: you basically turn into a little lump of google. And then,

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Speaker 1: of course, can the body can be reconstituted based on

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Speaker 1: on recombined DNA from the parents. But but yeah, for

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Speaker 1: a while, this line of organisms coming down the ages,

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Speaker 1: ever since the beginning of life on Earth, has always

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Speaker 1: been reduced back to a kind of primordial ooze with

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Speaker 1: each generation, every time it changes over. Yeah, I wonder if,

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Speaker 1: especially as we get more into you know that's certainly

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Speaker 1: the modern age and uh more scientifically literate, um, you know, public,

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Speaker 1: I wonder if that plays into our appreciation of the melt,

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Speaker 1: at least on a subconscious level. This idea that we

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Speaker 1: are all essentially creamy newgat and therefore to see us

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Speaker 1: reduced to creamy newgat, uh, you know, fills this with

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Speaker 1: a certain wonder or horror or just sort of you know,

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Speaker 1: kind of spiritual um awe. Yeah, our genetic essence at

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Speaker 1: least is contained in the new it, and we could

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Speaker 1: be rebuilt from the newgat. By the way, on the

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Speaker 1: topic of imaginal self, I once wrote an article about

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Speaker 1: gremlins for How Stuff Works in which I tried to

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Speaker 1: make scientific sense of the gremlins biology and the gremlin

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Speaker 1: magua relationship, which is was a challenge to do, but

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Speaker 1: I felt like the closest we could come to describing

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Speaker 1: some of the things that happened, like the the water

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Speaker 1: triggering um a sexual butting or the or specifically the

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Speaker 1: idea of sunlight melting that might be linked to some

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Speaker 1: sort of biological impulse to self digest within the cocoon

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Speaker 1: that has then triggered outside of the cocoon. Uh. In

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Speaker 1: the case of light exposed magua and gremlins, you should

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Speaker 1: have been present at that scene depicted in the Key

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Speaker 1: and Peel skit where they're a lot of gremlins too. Yes, yes, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's all right. We're gonna take a quick break, but

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Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Thank alright, we're back. Well, So,

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Speaker 1: with regard to organisms actually melting, you know sort of

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Speaker 1: like turning into a liquid or a goo. Uh. There

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Speaker 1: was something I briefly wanted to touch on, and it's

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Speaker 1: kind of parallel to some things we've talked about on

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Speaker 1: the show in the past. For example, when we did

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Speaker 1: an episode I think it was last year about pressure

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Speaker 1: about where we talked about and say, you know organisms

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Speaker 1: that thrive under high pressure deep in the ocean. One

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Speaker 1: of the things we talked about is that sometimes when

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Speaker 1: fish from deep waters are brought up to the surface,

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Speaker 1: they can undergo a kind of traumatic body response to

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Speaker 1: the lower pressures that they're exposed to on the surface.

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Speaker 1: So there are for example, types of rock fish or

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Speaker 1: other fish that can uh that can suffer eversions of

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Speaker 1: their digestive systems as their swim bladders expand with lower

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Speaker 1: pressure when they're brought up to the surface. So it

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Speaker 1: can actually actually like push their stumb out through their mouth,

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Speaker 1: which is really disgusting, don't knock it. Some organisms do

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Speaker 1: that as part of their they're just natural behavior. There

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Speaker 1: are certain sharks that do that too, if if memory

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Speaker 1: serves their sharks that that do that as a way

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Speaker 1: of emptying their their stomach if need be. It's called

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Speaker 1: stomach aversion. Well, for these fish. It is not part

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Speaker 1: of the plan. It's not voluntary. No, it happens because

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Speaker 1: like as they get as they rise up, the lower

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Speaker 1: pressure makes their swim the gas in their swim bladder

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Speaker 1: naturally expand. It pushes everything else out of the way,

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Speaker 1: and their guts get like pushed out through their mouth,

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Speaker 1: which is yeah, not good to happen to them. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And there are similar things that can happen, though not

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Speaker 1: not quite as stomach aversion, a little bit more melty

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Speaker 1: that happened to other organisms. The example I was looking

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Speaker 1: at was a type of fish that is known as

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Speaker 1: the snail fish, and there are a number of different

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Speaker 1: types of snail fish. This is a it's it's a

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Speaker 1: genus known as the liparidy and liparity often dwell in

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Speaker 1: very deep, very cold waters, especially in ocean trenches. And

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Speaker 1: so I was reading a New York Times article about

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Speaker 1: a discovery of several new types of snail fish in uh.

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Speaker 1: The article is by verynic Greenwood, and it was about

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Speaker 1: discoveries of three new types of snail fish of the

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Speaker 1: Atacama Trench, which is off the coast of Chile in

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Speaker 1: the southeastern Pacific Ocean. And this trench gets very deep.

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Speaker 1: It's almost five miles deep and down in the dark.

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Speaker 1: There some researchers, I think some of them more associated

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Speaker 1: with Newcastle University, they discovered these three new varieties of

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Speaker 1: snail fish. But they were describing the difficulty in bringing

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Speaker 1: these fish up to the surface because the fish are

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Speaker 1: adapted to these extremely deep waters. And so they were

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Speaker 1: speaking with a researcher named Thomas Linley who's with Newcastle University,

427
00:23:49,320 --> 00:23:53,520
Speaker 1: who says that their tissue is almost entirely gel quote.

428
00:23:53,680 --> 00:23:57,000
Speaker 1: They are really supported by the water around them, so

429
00:23:57,040 --> 00:23:59,840
Speaker 1: they do have some hard body parts. They have teeth,

430
00:24:00,000 --> 00:24:02,880
Speaker 1: I've read most species of snail fish have these kind

431
00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:07,000
Speaker 1: of blunt, little, uh cuppy kind of teeth, and then

432
00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:09,840
Speaker 1: they've got tiny bones, according to this article, especially in

433
00:24:09,880 --> 00:24:13,320
Speaker 1: the inner ear, and these are really the main hard

434
00:24:13,400 --> 00:24:16,200
Speaker 1: parts of their bodies. So if you grab some of

435
00:24:16,240 --> 00:24:18,439
Speaker 1: these snail fish and then you try to bring them

436
00:24:18,520 --> 00:24:22,200
Speaker 1: up to the surface to examine them, uh, it all

437
00:24:22,280 --> 00:24:25,440
Speaker 1: just goes to hell because when they're no longer confined

438
00:24:25,520 --> 00:24:28,480
Speaker 1: by the hydrostatic pressure of the deep water and the

439
00:24:28,520 --> 00:24:32,720
Speaker 1: extremely low temperatures of this deep ocean trench, they essentially

440
00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:37,760
Speaker 1: just melt when they get to the surface, quoting Thomas Linley,

441
00:24:37,800 --> 00:24:42,000
Speaker 1: they fall apart at like the molecular level. It's like

442
00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:45,119
Speaker 1: a ghost thing that's disappearing in front of your eyes.

443
00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:48,879
Speaker 1: And you might think, well, why why would a fish

444
00:24:49,080 --> 00:24:51,480
Speaker 1: be that fragile, you know, wouldn't need to have a

445
00:24:51,560 --> 00:24:54,480
Speaker 1: little bit more structural integrity to survive. But no, it's

446
00:24:54,520 --> 00:24:58,080
Speaker 1: because it's adapted to these extreme conditions that are present

447
00:24:58,160 --> 00:25:01,440
Speaker 1: only in this deep ocean trench where it lives. Uh,

448
00:25:01,480 --> 00:25:04,959
Speaker 1: Greenwood writes, quote this may be because shallow water snailfish

449
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:09,200
Speaker 1: gain adaptations that let them thrive in the deepest ocean

450
00:25:09,359 --> 00:25:12,000
Speaker 1: where they have plenty of prey, so there's less competition

451
00:25:12,080 --> 00:25:15,040
Speaker 1: down there because less stuff can survive there quote. But

452
00:25:15,160 --> 00:25:19,560
Speaker 1: then because of these physiological changes, they find themselves unable

453
00:25:19,600 --> 00:25:22,480
Speaker 1: to rise to higher levels to leave and thus are

454
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:25,639
Speaker 1: never seen by humans. So at the deepest parts of

455
00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:28,600
Speaker 1: the ocean and these trenches, you get these islands of

456
00:25:28,760 --> 00:25:32,600
Speaker 1: adapted organisms, including these types of snail fish, that have

457
00:25:32,760 --> 00:25:36,080
Speaker 1: to make major changes to their bodies through evolution in

458
00:25:36,160 --> 00:25:38,720
Speaker 1: order to survive down there. But then once they make

459
00:25:38,760 --> 00:25:40,840
Speaker 1: those changes, they're kind of stuck right there, not going

460
00:25:40,920 --> 00:25:44,240
Speaker 1: to migrate out of these deep water trenches once they're there,

461
00:25:44,280 --> 00:25:47,200
Speaker 1: because now they have bodies that can't survive at the

462
00:25:47,240 --> 00:25:51,080
Speaker 1: lower pressures and higher temperatures of more shallow water. It's

463
00:25:51,080 --> 00:25:56,080
Speaker 1: like becoming a professional podcaster, you realize sound goodness. Yeah,

464
00:25:56,160 --> 00:25:59,720
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can handle um, different depths. Um,

465
00:25:59,760 --> 00:26:01,720
Speaker 1: I'm may be stuck down here. Yeah, you're in the

466
00:26:01,760 --> 00:26:04,800
Speaker 1: like the challenger deep of career paths where you're I

467
00:26:04,880 --> 00:26:08,960
Speaker 1: specialize in talking about science and horror movies. Yeah. People,

468
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:12,280
Speaker 1: it's a really useful skill, you know. It's this is

469
00:26:12,320 --> 00:26:14,280
Speaker 1: actually ties in with a lot of stuff we're talking about,

470
00:26:14,320 --> 00:26:16,840
Speaker 1: because even in this we're joking about the fear of

471
00:26:16,920 --> 00:26:21,919
Speaker 1: change and and perhaps clinging to stability um and and

472
00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:23,840
Speaker 1: in the case of this, this creature, this is a

473
00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:28,320
Speaker 1: creature that thrives in this this this narrow environment that

474
00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:31,240
Speaker 1: is pretty stable, but it cannot handle change at all.

475
00:26:32,040 --> 00:26:34,720
Speaker 1: Uh and melting in our fear of melting, our desire

476
00:26:34,760 --> 00:26:36,920
Speaker 1: to melt, etcetera. A lot of this does does seem

477
00:26:36,920 --> 00:26:40,760
Speaker 1: to center around how we deal with change. And I

478
00:26:40,760 --> 00:26:42,480
Speaker 1: think one thing to keep in mind is that melting.

479
00:26:42,520 --> 00:26:45,040
Speaker 1: We've certainly touched on a lot of horrifying examples. But

480
00:26:45,160 --> 00:26:48,720
Speaker 1: melting doesn't have to be bad. Just look to our language, um,

481
00:26:48,800 --> 00:26:51,280
Speaker 1: you know, because we have we have some really positive

482
00:26:51,320 --> 00:26:54,679
Speaker 1: ideas and metaphors that relate to melting at time, like

483
00:26:54,840 --> 00:26:58,520
Speaker 1: the idea of melting with joy or seeing something or

484
00:26:58,560 --> 00:27:03,679
Speaker 1: experiencing something that quote just makes you melt. Um, there's uh,

485
00:27:04,359 --> 00:27:06,800
Speaker 1: I'm sure, especially if you if you were someone you

486
00:27:06,840 --> 00:27:11,600
Speaker 1: know uh enjoys like metal or dub step music or

487
00:27:11,640 --> 00:27:13,480
Speaker 1: some other kind of genre that has kind of a

488
00:27:14,640 --> 00:27:19,960
Speaker 1: I don't know, an atmosphere of intensity to it. Sometimes

489
00:27:19,960 --> 00:27:23,480
Speaker 1: you'll say loudness, love of loudness. You'll hear about how

490
00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:26,679
Speaker 1: it is it is face melting right, Uh, And and

491
00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:30,280
Speaker 1: that and that is largely depicted as being a positive thing. Yeah.

492
00:27:30,320 --> 00:27:32,439
Speaker 1: One of my favorite musicians is Neil Young, and I

493
00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:36,040
Speaker 1: remember an interview many years ago where Conan O'Brien was

494
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:39,640
Speaker 1: interviewing him and he he told him, I watched you

495
00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:42,919
Speaker 1: at some concert play a rendition of rocking in the

496
00:27:42,920 --> 00:27:46,879
Speaker 1: free world that made my eyes melt. It's clearly a compliment.

497
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:49,359
Speaker 1: Did he mean crying? Was he crying? No? No, I

498
00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:51,600
Speaker 1: think he just meant like it was so powerful it

499
00:27:51,800 --> 00:27:55,480
Speaker 1: like destroyed my body, but he meant it as a compliment. Okay,

500
00:27:55,520 --> 00:28:00,080
Speaker 1: because yeah, because I think sometimes crying plays into how

501
00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:03,920
Speaker 1: we're loosely thinking about melting. But it doesn't seem to

502
00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:07,000
Speaker 1: be a case where we're using it as like a

503
00:28:07,080 --> 00:28:10,280
Speaker 1: euphemism for for crying, you know, or trying to sort

504
00:28:10,320 --> 00:28:12,080
Speaker 1: of cover up the fact that we're crying, like trying

505
00:28:12,119 --> 00:28:15,000
Speaker 1: to be like hyper masculine about crying. That doesn't seem

506
00:28:15,080 --> 00:28:17,720
Speaker 1: to be the way that people use melt. No, But

507
00:28:17,840 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 1: I think there's a very interesting thing that if you

508
00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:24,040
Speaker 1: look at movie scenes where characters are very first beginning

509
00:28:24,040 --> 00:28:26,879
Speaker 1: to melt, so the melt scene is happening very often,

510
00:28:26,920 --> 00:28:28,880
Speaker 1: a place for it to start is with some kind

511
00:28:28,880 --> 00:28:32,080
Speaker 1: of piece, like a drop of liquid rolling down the face,

512
00:28:32,160 --> 00:28:36,680
Speaker 1: almost like a tear drop does. Is interesting. I guess

513
00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:39,280
Speaker 1: it does kind of look like, like, you know, just

514
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:42,280
Speaker 1: water going down the face. You could sort of interpret

515
00:28:42,360 --> 00:28:45,440
Speaker 1: it as like flesh or the surface of flesh melting.

516
00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:48,680
Speaker 1: But that's a good point. So I was looking around

517
00:28:48,680 --> 00:28:51,040
Speaker 1: to see if anybody, you know, done any you know,

518
00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:56,400
Speaker 1: serious contemplation on this idea of of of melting, of

519
00:28:56,520 --> 00:28:58,840
Speaker 1: you know, there being a fear of melting or desire

520
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:02,120
Speaker 1: to melt um because, as we've discussed on the show before,

521
00:29:02,760 --> 00:29:06,880
Speaker 1: you do see psychological delusions such as that of feeling

522
00:29:06,960 --> 00:29:09,600
Speaker 1: that your body as is as brittle as glass and

523
00:29:09,640 --> 00:29:14,160
Speaker 1: may shatter, So why not melting as well? Yeah, there

524
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:18,480
Speaker 1: are all kinds of uh, psychological conditions that can disrupt

525
00:29:18,680 --> 00:29:23,120
Speaker 1: various features of the body schema, or can disrupt types

526
00:29:23,120 --> 00:29:26,280
Speaker 1: of appropriate reception where you since, where your body is,

527
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:29,480
Speaker 1: what it feels like, what's happening to it. Yeah, So

528
00:29:29,640 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 1: I did not find anything. If anyone out there has

529
00:29:33,080 --> 00:29:35,360
Speaker 1: run across it, I am happy to be corrected, but

530
00:29:35,400 --> 00:29:38,400
Speaker 1: I'm also I'm not I'm not gonna say I'm disappointed

531
00:29:38,840 --> 00:29:41,640
Speaker 1: that people are not dealing with a psychological delusion that

532
00:29:41,680 --> 00:29:45,000
Speaker 1: their bodies are melting, like I'm I'm happy that people

533
00:29:45,040 --> 00:29:48,080
Speaker 1: are spared that at least. Uh. But I did come

534
00:29:48,120 --> 00:29:53,959
Speaker 1: across studies in Nondeterministic Psychology by James L. Fausage. Uh.

535
00:29:54,040 --> 00:29:58,880
Speaker 1: This is the National Institute of Psychotherapies in ninety and

536
00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:03,160
Speaker 1: in it, the author discusses psychotherapy approaches that make use

537
00:30:03,200 --> 00:30:08,480
Speaker 1: of transformative melting metaphors during the waking state of consciousness,

538
00:30:08,520 --> 00:30:11,920
Speaker 1: which I found quite interesting. So this is not. You know,

539
00:30:12,520 --> 00:30:15,280
Speaker 1: this is very much about like using various mental images

540
00:30:15,320 --> 00:30:17,800
Speaker 1: as a way of connecting with the patient and psychotherapy,

541
00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:19,920
Speaker 1: but it touches on some of the things we're talking

542
00:30:19,960 --> 00:30:25,320
Speaker 1: about here. So in this paper, Fassage Minsent mentions the

543
00:30:25,400 --> 00:30:29,000
Speaker 1: melting of a shield with one's warmth. So that's like

544
00:30:29,040 --> 00:30:32,000
Speaker 1: there's a shield between you and another person or another thing,

545
00:30:32,280 --> 00:30:35,040
Speaker 1: and your warmth can be the thing that melts the shield,

546
00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:38,840
Speaker 1: so you're like a an instrument of melting. And then

547
00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:41,520
Speaker 1: there's quote the fear of melting, of letting go and

548
00:30:41,600 --> 00:30:45,920
Speaker 1: becoming vulnerable without adequate defenses, which I think is is

549
00:30:46,040 --> 00:30:49,200
Speaker 1: very key. And then there's the fear of melting completely

550
00:30:49,480 --> 00:30:52,040
Speaker 1: and there being nothing left of oneself, this kind of

551
00:30:52,040 --> 00:30:55,160
Speaker 1: I guess, going back to the candle metaphor, but also

552
00:30:55,600 --> 00:30:57,280
Speaker 1: reminding me a bit of the wicked Witch of the

553
00:30:57,320 --> 00:30:59,880
Speaker 1: West as well, you know, because she basically melts awaited nothing.

554
00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:02,320
Speaker 1: It's just left. All this left is just the clothing

555
00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:05,280
Speaker 1: that she was wearing. I'd say, in psychological terms, the

556
00:31:05,360 --> 00:31:08,640
Speaker 1: one that I here emerged most naturally from people is

557
00:31:08,800 --> 00:31:12,520
Speaker 1: the middle one about the melting of defenses. The idea

558
00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:18,200
Speaker 1: that people bring up metaphors of melting when they're talking

559
00:31:18,240 --> 00:31:25,720
Speaker 1: about people becoming more open and vulnerable with each other. Yeah, which,

560
00:31:26,040 --> 00:31:28,160
Speaker 1: on one hand, you might say, well, that's clearly not

561
00:31:28,280 --> 00:31:30,760
Speaker 1: what the Incredible Melting Man is about, that's clearly not

562
00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 1: what RoboCop is about, etcetera. But I'm not quite convinced.

563
00:31:34,520 --> 00:31:37,800
Speaker 1: I think I think these may, on a subconscious level,

564
00:31:38,080 --> 00:31:41,840
Speaker 1: be be about the the fear of of what happens

565
00:31:41,840 --> 00:31:44,680
Speaker 1: if we open ourselves up to the world too much,

566
00:31:44,720 --> 00:31:47,360
Speaker 1: you know, like because it's let me look at RoboCop,

567
00:31:47,440 --> 00:31:50,560
Speaker 1: you know it's or straight trash. These are films in

568
00:31:50,560 --> 00:31:53,520
Speaker 1: which the world around us is depicted as being a

569
00:31:53,600 --> 00:31:57,520
Speaker 1: horrible place, and you know you want to I guess

570
00:31:57,520 --> 00:32:00,920
Speaker 1: from your exterior to remain is is hard and impregnant,

571
00:32:00,960 --> 00:32:04,760
Speaker 1: impregnatble is possible right in those cases, like you don't

572
00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:08,120
Speaker 1: want to melt into that world. That world would melt you, though,

573
00:32:08,160 --> 00:32:10,280
Speaker 1: I would say one of the main themes of RoboCop

574
00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:15,120
Speaker 1: is the attempt to hang on to pieces of humanity

575
00:32:15,320 --> 00:32:19,000
Speaker 1: in an in in an inhuman or inhumane world, and

576
00:32:19,040 --> 00:32:24,560
Speaker 1: a world that is ruled by by cruelty and corporations

577
00:32:24,600 --> 00:32:30,040
Speaker 1: and machines and and transactional relationships trying to hang onto

578
00:32:30,040 --> 00:32:32,880
Speaker 1: something that's pure and good and human. And you see

579
00:32:32,880 --> 00:32:36,000
Speaker 1: that emphasized in several of the scenes between Alex Murphy

580
00:32:36,040 --> 00:32:39,320
Speaker 1: or RoboCop and Lewis played by Nancy Allen, his partner.

581
00:32:39,360 --> 00:32:42,120
Speaker 1: They've got these these little moments where you can remember

582
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:45,360
Speaker 1: that you're human even when he's mostly machine. That's a

583
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:48,640
Speaker 1: that's a very good point. Yeah, and again just more reasonable, like, no,

584
00:32:48,840 --> 00:32:53,760
Speaker 1: don't just dismiss RoboCop. Is this ultra violent, you know,

585
00:32:54,120 --> 00:32:56,360
Speaker 1: piece of trash or something like, There's there's a lot

586
00:32:56,400 --> 00:32:58,720
Speaker 1: going on there. It's so I don't think it's for

587
00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:02,320
Speaker 1: for all tastes, but it's it's definitely a film that

588
00:33:02,360 --> 00:33:05,080
Speaker 1: intends to say something. Yeah, it's a movie. It's a

589
00:33:05,080 --> 00:33:07,920
Speaker 1: movie that's relatable to anyone who's trying to remain a

590
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:11,000
Speaker 1: human at the same time that a corporation is extracting

591
00:33:11,040 --> 00:33:15,040
Speaker 1: maximum value from what's left of your body. Yeah. So yeah, again,

592
00:33:15,080 --> 00:33:17,080
Speaker 1: this is a world where that you do not want

593
00:33:17,120 --> 00:33:19,120
Speaker 1: to melt into. You don't want to let go and

594
00:33:19,160 --> 00:33:21,960
Speaker 1: become vulnerable, because you want to hang on to that

595
00:33:22,160 --> 00:33:24,360
Speaker 1: part of you that's still human that hasn't been crushed

596
00:33:24,360 --> 00:33:27,440
Speaker 1: by the machine yet. So I think it's also interesting

597
00:33:27,440 --> 00:33:29,080
Speaker 1: in all of this, you know what we're talking about,

598
00:33:29,160 --> 00:33:33,840
Speaker 1: this idea of like the metaphorical body uh melting away

599
00:33:34,120 --> 00:33:36,320
Speaker 1: and uh and all, and then how this is reflected

600
00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:40,040
Speaker 1: in these horrific images of the body melting. But while

601
00:33:40,120 --> 00:33:43,480
Speaker 1: a wax effigy of a human definitely melts, our bodies

602
00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:47,520
Speaker 1: don't really melt even in the even when extreme things

603
00:33:47,600 --> 00:33:52,200
Speaker 1: happen to them. Um, generally, what's going on with us

604
00:33:52,280 --> 00:33:55,800
Speaker 1: is not quite the phase change that we see occurring

605
00:33:55,880 --> 00:33:59,600
Speaker 1: when say ice melts, or even when when when wax

606
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:03,000
Speaker 1: is melt thing away. Um, it's not quite what it is.

607
00:34:03,280 --> 00:34:06,760
Speaker 1: It's similar to in our episode about freezing, about how

608
00:34:07,040 --> 00:34:10,279
Speaker 1: our bodies don't exactly freeze solid and shatter in the

609
00:34:10,320 --> 00:34:13,279
Speaker 1: way that pure water can correct. But I think we

610
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:15,680
Speaker 1: concluded in that episode that if you get a body

611
00:34:15,719 --> 00:34:19,400
Speaker 1: cold enough, like you know, down to liquid nitrogen temperatures,

612
00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:22,719
Speaker 1: and use enough force, you can achieve some shattering like

613
00:34:23,000 --> 00:34:25,520
Speaker 1: the kinds of things. And I think something similar is

614
00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:29,000
Speaker 1: true with melting, that the human body doesn't melt the

615
00:34:29,040 --> 00:34:32,239
Speaker 1: way Nazis do in the movies, but elements of the

616
00:34:32,320 --> 00:34:34,400
Speaker 1: human body will kind of melt. I mean the body

617
00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:37,440
Speaker 1: is made of different types of tissues and materials, and

618
00:34:37,600 --> 00:34:41,520
Speaker 1: some of them will sort of melt, yeah, some some

619
00:34:41,520 --> 00:34:44,680
Speaker 1: some parts of our flesh liquefy a little more easily,

620
00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:47,640
Speaker 1: and in rare cases, human fat in the body has

621
00:34:47,640 --> 00:34:51,080
Speaker 1: been observed to behave something like the wick of a candle.

622
00:34:51,200 --> 00:34:53,879
Speaker 1: This is called the wick effect. And uh, if you've

623
00:34:54,000 --> 00:34:57,120
Speaker 1: if you've ever read anything about the various theories involving

624
00:34:57,280 --> 00:35:01,959
Speaker 1: um uh spontaneous combust they are the wik effect often

625
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:04,680
Speaker 1: plays into this. So so coming back to some of the

626
00:35:04,640 --> 00:35:08,920
Speaker 1: the faustages explorations about melting um, I want to come

627
00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:11,960
Speaker 1: back to the idea of of losing oneself through melting,

628
00:35:12,400 --> 00:35:14,680
Speaker 1: and in this I think melting serves as a strong

629
00:35:14,760 --> 00:35:18,000
Speaker 1: metaphor for gradual decay, for aging, for the you know,

630
00:35:18,040 --> 00:35:22,360
Speaker 1: the gradual work of a debilitating disease. Uh. These effects

631
00:35:22,360 --> 00:35:25,319
Speaker 1: coupled with the totality of death, you know, because death

632
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:27,960
Speaker 1: robs us of everything that we are, and in the

633
00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:31,560
Speaker 1: in its wake, there can be an almost candle like experience.

634
00:35:31,680 --> 00:35:34,360
Speaker 1: Right again, think back to what we talked about in

635
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:38,600
Speaker 1: the Wax episodes about how the candle often had magical

636
00:35:38,880 --> 00:35:43,160
Speaker 1: um uh connotations in various cultures because it was this thing,

637
00:35:43,640 --> 00:35:47,759
Speaker 1: this physical thing that burned away completely are almost completely,

638
00:35:48,160 --> 00:35:49,719
Speaker 1: you know. And at the end you might ask, was

639
00:35:49,760 --> 00:35:52,759
Speaker 1: the candle even real? Did it exist? Where did it go?

640
00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:56,640
Speaker 1: And he's certainly in the face of actual human death,

641
00:35:56,680 --> 00:36:00,680
Speaker 1: not movie human death, but but actual personal loss. You

642
00:36:00,719 --> 00:36:04,200
Speaker 1: can feel that as well totally. Now the idea of

643
00:36:04,239 --> 00:36:08,280
Speaker 1: melting as phase transfer by which we become more vulnerable

644
00:36:08,320 --> 00:36:12,120
Speaker 1: without adequate defenses, you know, of letting go. Um. You know,

645
00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:14,880
Speaker 1: I think that's extremely apt as well. It certainly ties

646
00:36:14,920 --> 00:36:19,240
Speaker 1: into our uses of melting, as in melting with joy um. Again,

647
00:36:19,280 --> 00:36:23,360
Speaker 1: perhaps tears add an additional context to a certain degree, Um,

648
00:36:23,400 --> 00:36:26,080
Speaker 1: But for the most part, it's it's about becoming more

649
00:36:26,160 --> 00:36:30,080
Speaker 1: malleable to the world around you, both in positive and

650
00:36:30,120 --> 00:36:34,040
Speaker 1: in negative ways, connecting with other people, connecting with the environment,

651
00:36:34,640 --> 00:36:38,799
Speaker 1: but also perhaps opening yourself to the dangers of other

652
00:36:38,880 --> 00:36:42,520
Speaker 1: people and of society, etcetera. It reminds me a lot

653
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:44,840
Speaker 1: of what we discussed in our psychedelic episodes, you know,

654
00:36:44,960 --> 00:36:48,759
Speaker 1: about the breaking down of boundaries between ourselves and others,

655
00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:52,400
Speaker 1: between ourselves and the natural world. Not only melting, but

656
00:36:52,560 --> 00:36:56,799
Speaker 1: merging into some larger totality. Uh. In fact, I look back.

657
00:36:56,840 --> 00:37:00,160
Speaker 1: Just just out of curiosity, I did some quick uh

658
00:37:00,520 --> 00:37:03,040
Speaker 1: word searches in a in a few texts uh to

659
00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:06,440
Speaker 1: see who is using melting, and I noticed, for instance

660
00:37:06,480 --> 00:37:10,520
Speaker 1: that that Huxley did not use melt or melting at

661
00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:13,440
Speaker 1: all in the Doors of Perception, but for instance far

662
00:37:13,480 --> 00:37:16,960
Speaker 1: more recent work UM in How to Change Your Mind

663
00:37:17,080 --> 00:37:20,520
Speaker 1: by Michael Pollen, he uses melt or melting multiple times

664
00:37:20,520 --> 00:37:23,200
Speaker 1: in the book. You know, it seems like a pretty

665
00:37:23,200 --> 00:37:28,759
Speaker 1: handy contemporary um uh mental image to draw upon to

666
00:37:28,840 --> 00:37:32,719
Speaker 1: make sense of what's happening with the psychedelic experience. Well, yeah,

667
00:37:32,800 --> 00:37:36,120
Speaker 1: I mean, in fact, I would say melting becomes an

668
00:37:36,160 --> 00:37:40,960
Speaker 1: interesting way of thinking about psychedelic psychedelic compounds effects on

669
00:37:40,960 --> 00:37:43,520
Speaker 1: our perception because it even comes through and just the

670
00:37:43,560 --> 00:37:48,200
Speaker 1: sheer mechanics of um how imagery transitions under the effects

671
00:37:48,200 --> 00:37:50,959
Speaker 1: of many psychedelics, where there are these things that people

672
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:54,640
Speaker 1: talk about like using terms like tracers and things like that,

673
00:37:54,719 --> 00:37:59,959
Speaker 1: where mental imagery and even visual imagery is perceived normal

674
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:04,560
Speaker 1: only doesn't transition as quickly from one state to another,

675
00:38:04,600 --> 00:38:07,080
Speaker 1: but there seemed to be sort of drag effects in

676
00:38:07,160 --> 00:38:10,640
Speaker 1: between images, you know what I'm talking about, uh, And

677
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:15,440
Speaker 1: that this simulates a kind of liquidity of mental content

678
00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:19,760
Speaker 1: that I think is quite aptly described by metaphors of melting.

679
00:38:20,080 --> 00:38:23,799
Speaker 1: Often on psychedelics people describe some version of instead of

680
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:26,840
Speaker 1: just thinking about image A and then thinking about image B,

681
00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 1: image A melts into image B. Yeah. I don't know

682
00:38:31,160 --> 00:38:34,040
Speaker 1: if that was entirely clear, but just the psychedelics really

683
00:38:34,080 --> 00:38:37,640
Speaker 1: encourage these sort of like dragging transition states. No, I

684
00:38:37,640 --> 00:38:40,800
Speaker 1: absolutely agree, And it's interesting to think that, like, since

685
00:38:40,880 --> 00:38:44,680
Speaker 1: that kind of thing is so common phenomenologically, it would

686
00:38:44,680 --> 00:38:47,879
Speaker 1: almost suggest there is something about these compounds that that

687
00:38:47,960 --> 00:38:51,919
Speaker 1: consistently encourage that at a chemical level in the brain. Yeah,

688
00:38:51,960 --> 00:38:53,359
Speaker 1: I mean, and some of them maybe even comes down

689
00:38:53,400 --> 00:38:56,759
Speaker 1: to like how we're how we're we're taking in sense data, right,

690
00:38:57,239 --> 00:39:00,239
Speaker 1: is it are we taking in abstract facts about the

691
00:39:00,280 --> 00:39:04,200
Speaker 1: reality around us? Or is it a more fluid observation

692
00:39:04,239 --> 00:39:08,680
Speaker 1: of reality in terms of of of making note of changes. Oh,

693
00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:12,480
Speaker 1: that's very interesting. So like instead of that, maybe you

694
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:16,239
Speaker 1: could more easily, in a normal frame of mind, look

695
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:18,840
Speaker 1: at one thing and then look at another thing because

696
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:22,000
Speaker 1: you've got cognitive filtering that you're applying to your visual

697
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:25,040
Speaker 1: sense data. You know that that's sort of like excluding

698
00:39:25,120 --> 00:39:28,919
Speaker 1: the transition, the transitional middle period of what your eyes

699
00:39:28,960 --> 00:39:32,279
Speaker 1: are doing. But on the psychedelic you're processing things in

700
00:39:32,320 --> 00:39:35,919
Speaker 1: a raw or way that h does not filter out

701
00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:39,759
Speaker 1: the transitional period as efficiently. Yeah, like instead of saying, oh,

702
00:39:39,840 --> 00:39:42,320
Speaker 1: that's my face in the mirror, it's more it's a

703
00:39:42,360 --> 00:39:45,520
Speaker 1: continual updating of it. Uh. They can create kind of

704
00:39:45,520 --> 00:39:48,880
Speaker 1: a melting effect without it actually looking like your face

705
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:52,080
Speaker 1: is straight up melting. So I I would never attempt

706
00:39:52,080 --> 00:39:55,439
Speaker 1: to argue that something like, um, you know that to say,

707
00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:58,960
Speaker 1: the psychedelic experience and humanities istory, the psychedelic experience is

708
00:39:59,000 --> 00:40:01,360
Speaker 1: certainly in the like the twenty a century would have

709
00:40:01,520 --> 00:40:04,960
Speaker 1: been like the the soul uh influence on all this

710
00:40:05,160 --> 00:40:09,560
Speaker 1: melting um fixation in cinema. But but I can't help

711
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:11,640
Speaker 1: but wonder if that's part of it. But clearly you

712
00:40:11,640 --> 00:40:13,840
Speaker 1: still have other things. You have just the cinematic influence

713
00:40:13,880 --> 00:40:16,720
Speaker 1: and tradition that's going on. When you know, people watch

714
00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:19,799
Speaker 1: a witch melt in one film and then create a

715
00:40:19,880 --> 00:40:23,239
Speaker 1: melting effect in another film later on. Obviously that's part

716
00:40:23,280 --> 00:40:26,840
Speaker 1: of it. Um. And I think also material the materials

717
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:28,520
Speaker 1: in our surrounding culture are a big part of it.

718
00:40:28,560 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 1: As well. I mean we see that again with wax.

719
00:40:31,280 --> 00:40:33,759
Speaker 1: Observations of wax, and then what happens when you create

720
00:40:33,800 --> 00:40:37,640
Speaker 1: a human of wax? Also, what happens when you have

721
00:40:38,160 --> 00:40:41,800
Speaker 1: you know, a wax culture that becomes eventually an iron culture,

722
00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:44,239
Speaker 1: and then you have all of this melting and smelting

723
00:40:44,719 --> 00:40:48,200
Speaker 1: uh mixed up in um in in your understanding the world.

724
00:40:48,239 --> 00:40:50,120
Speaker 1: And then what happens when you go from an iron

725
00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:53,320
Speaker 1: culture eventually to a plastic culture. You know, it brings

726
00:40:53,360 --> 00:40:57,080
Speaker 1: on new connotations of what melting is, how things melt,

727
00:40:57,480 --> 00:41:00,920
Speaker 1: and how we might imagine our bodies in reference to

728
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:03,360
Speaker 1: that material. Oh yeah, I was just thinking about the

729
00:41:03,560 --> 00:41:07,920
Speaker 1: metaphors we live by here. So so the metal metaphor

730
00:41:08,040 --> 00:41:10,840
Speaker 1: is one in which it takes a tremendous amount of

731
00:41:10,880 --> 00:41:14,840
Speaker 1: work to change one's shape. The plastic metaphor is pretty

732
00:41:14,880 --> 00:41:17,000
Speaker 1: much just shaped at the factory. You're not gonna melt

733
00:41:17,080 --> 00:41:19,680
Speaker 1: it and reshape it. That would kind of destroy it.

734
00:41:19,800 --> 00:41:23,200
Speaker 1: So it's it's, you know, the plastic age. You're just stuck.

735
00:41:23,600 --> 00:41:25,560
Speaker 1: All right, We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll

736
00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:30,359
Speaker 1: be right back. Thank you, thank you, thank and we're back.

737
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:33,480
Speaker 1: And you know this this ultimately leads us to the

738
00:41:33,520 --> 00:41:35,480
Speaker 1: next topic we're going to discuss here, and this will

739
00:41:35,520 --> 00:41:37,279
Speaker 1: be I guess that's sort of the final topic of

740
00:41:37,320 --> 00:41:41,320
Speaker 1: discussion in this episode, and that is another major melting

741
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:44,759
Speaker 1: symbol or metaphor that comes up that a lot of

742
00:41:44,840 --> 00:41:47,080
Speaker 1: you are probably thinking about already, and that is the

743
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:50,799
Speaker 1: American melting pot. Now quick note again, we're recording this

744
00:41:50,840 --> 00:41:54,520
Speaker 1: episode the week of Halloween, though it won't publish till

745
00:41:54,560 --> 00:41:57,680
Speaker 1: after election day, So just throwing that out there for

746
00:41:57,760 --> 00:42:01,320
Speaker 1: timing should it be essential. So this is another area

747
00:42:01,400 --> 00:42:04,279
Speaker 1: where I think when we're talking about melting, everything we've

748
00:42:04,280 --> 00:42:08,040
Speaker 1: discussed so far is still very much in play, uh melting,

749
00:42:08,040 --> 00:42:10,359
Speaker 1: and even you know, the fear of melting, but also

750
00:42:10,440 --> 00:42:14,240
Speaker 1: the potential joy of melting, the transformative nature of melting.

751
00:42:14,719 --> 00:42:20,040
Speaker 1: It's all reflected in this strange concept of the American

752
00:42:20,040 --> 00:42:24,240
Speaker 1: melting pot, something that I've heard my whole life, and

753
00:42:24,239 --> 00:42:26,799
Speaker 1: and I have to say, I think early on I

754
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:29,640
Speaker 1: always interpreted it's kind of a stewpot. Maybe I was

755
00:42:29,680 --> 00:42:34,320
Speaker 1: confused by the franchise of Fondue restaurants called the melting pot.

756
00:42:35,040 --> 00:42:38,120
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly sure, because I mean, clearly it is

757
00:42:38,160 --> 00:42:41,920
Speaker 1: referring to a you know, a metallurgical comparison. Here, it

758
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:45,360
Speaker 1: is an idea of metals melting together in in a pot,

759
00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:48,840
Speaker 1: you combine different metals to form a stronger alloy that

760
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:52,920
Speaker 1: has the great properties of each. Yeah. On some level, though,

761
00:42:52,920 --> 00:42:55,880
Speaker 1: I did recognize that it seemed to be about different

762
00:42:55,920 --> 00:42:59,160
Speaker 1: cultures and backgrounds, so that was only coming together in

763
00:42:59,200 --> 00:43:03,720
Speaker 1: this pot that is America and becoming something new. Now

764
00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:08,520
Speaker 1: it's this is a broad and h and at times

765
00:43:08,640 --> 00:43:13,480
Speaker 1: very uh, you know, non specific symbol to engage with,

766
00:43:13,560 --> 00:43:16,239
Speaker 1: because it ultimately raises a lot of questions like is

767
00:43:16,320 --> 00:43:19,440
Speaker 1: this is this an accurate, accurate depiction depiction of what

768
00:43:19,520 --> 00:43:22,640
Speaker 1: American culture is? Is it more of an ideal of

769
00:43:22,680 --> 00:43:25,720
Speaker 1: what it could be? Is it a misunderstanding of culture?

770
00:43:26,440 --> 00:43:29,200
Speaker 1: Is it actually a misunderstanding of melting. Is it a

771
00:43:29,280 --> 00:43:33,600
Speaker 1: helpful concept? Is it a hurtful concept? Uh? And certainly,

772
00:43:33,640 --> 00:43:36,480
Speaker 1: at least to some extent. It depends on how it's

773
00:43:36,520 --> 00:43:41,200
Speaker 1: being used and who's using it during what period of

774
00:43:41,200 --> 00:43:43,560
Speaker 1: of of you know, the last century or so of

775
00:43:43,600 --> 00:43:46,520
Speaker 1: American history. You know, is it something to support the

776
00:43:46,600 --> 00:43:50,520
Speaker 1: idea of a monoculture and often a particular monoculture, or

777
00:43:50,680 --> 00:43:54,000
Speaker 1: is it anti multiculturalism. So I decided to look into

778
00:43:54,040 --> 00:43:56,560
Speaker 1: this a little bit and say, and just learn from myself, like,

779
00:43:56,640 --> 00:43:58,520
Speaker 1: what what are the origins of this term? I? I

780
00:43:58,840 --> 00:44:02,200
Speaker 1: honestly didn't have any idea. Uh. So I read a

781
00:44:02,200 --> 00:44:06,680
Speaker 1: paper this is from nineteen sixty four by historian Philip Gleason,

782
00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:10,160
Speaker 1: uh and it's titled the Melting Pot Symbol of Fusion

783
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:14,560
Speaker 1: or Confusion in American Quarterly. That's a great title, um

784
00:44:14,800 --> 00:44:18,000
Speaker 1: Infusion or Confusion and American Quarterly, by the way, as

785
00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:20,840
Speaker 1: an academic journal and the official publication of the American

786
00:44:20,880 --> 00:44:24,960
Speaker 1: Studies Association. So I want to roll through some of

787
00:44:24,960 --> 00:44:28,480
Speaker 1: the points that Gleason makes. I am not attempting to

788
00:44:28,480 --> 00:44:33,040
Speaker 1: summarize the entire uh right up here, I recommend seeking

789
00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:34,880
Speaker 1: this out if you want the full story. It's a

790
00:44:34,920 --> 00:44:37,360
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a wonderful read, and it's invable

791
00:44:37,400 --> 00:44:41,000
Speaker 1: available in full in full on J Starr. So, first

792
00:44:41,000 --> 00:44:43,839
Speaker 1: of all, he ties this this idea back to the

793
00:44:43,880 --> 00:44:47,160
Speaker 1: myth of medals in Plato's The Republic. Uh. This is

794
00:44:47,160 --> 00:44:50,400
Speaker 1: also known as the Noble lie. And here's how Malcolm's

795
00:44:50,680 --> 00:44:55,000
Speaker 1: Scofield summarized it in the Cambridge Companion to Plato's republic

796
00:44:55,480 --> 00:44:58,399
Speaker 1: quote The Noble Lie is to serve as charter myth

797
00:44:58,480 --> 00:45:02,400
Speaker 1: for Plato's Good City, a myth of national or civic identity,

798
00:45:02,719 --> 00:45:06,400
Speaker 1: or rather two related myths, one grounding that identity in

799
00:45:06,440 --> 00:45:10,279
Speaker 1: the natural brotherhood of the entire indigenous population. They're all

800
00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:14,120
Speaker 1: auto cathanis literally born from the earth. The other making

801
00:45:14,120 --> 00:45:18,920
Speaker 1: the city's differentiated class structure a matter of divine dispensation.

802
00:45:19,360 --> 00:45:22,520
Speaker 1: The god who molds them puts different metals in their souls.

803
00:45:22,880 --> 00:45:25,359
Speaker 1: If people can be made to believe it, they will

804
00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:28,040
Speaker 1: be strongly motivated to care for the city and for

805
00:45:28,080 --> 00:45:30,719
Speaker 1: each other if they can be made to believe it. So,

806
00:45:30,840 --> 00:45:33,279
Speaker 1: I mean, at least in Plato's vision, there's got to

807
00:45:33,320 --> 00:45:35,719
Speaker 1: be a certain amount of just like getting people on

808
00:45:35,800 --> 00:45:40,000
Speaker 1: board with a certain way of thinking about things. Yeah. Now,

809
00:45:40,040 --> 00:45:42,680
Speaker 1: Gleason writes that the American myth of the metals here

810
00:45:42,800 --> 00:45:46,000
Speaker 1: is is ultimately a rejection of the platonic Um and

811
00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:49,880
Speaker 1: this is the melting pot quote. Unlike Plato's, it was

812
00:45:49,920 --> 00:45:53,440
Speaker 1: not deliberately contrived to provide a supernatural sanction for the

813
00:45:53,480 --> 00:45:56,560
Speaker 1: existing social order. But is it that it is intimately

814
00:45:56,600 --> 00:46:00,720
Speaker 1: related to the origins and nature of American society. Okay,

815
00:46:00,719 --> 00:46:03,840
Speaker 1: so it's not a supernatural myth that you would tell people,

816
00:46:04,040 --> 00:46:06,920
Speaker 1: like a story that you make up to unify them.

817
00:46:06,960 --> 00:46:10,080
Speaker 1: But in the case of American society, it's supposed to

818
00:46:10,120 --> 00:46:13,759
Speaker 1: be a fact that is literally just like descriptive and

819
00:46:13,840 --> 00:46:17,839
Speaker 1: self evident. Yeah. The interesting thing that Gleason drives someone

820
00:46:17,840 --> 00:46:19,600
Speaker 1: about the melting pot, and I hadn't really thought about

821
00:46:19,600 --> 00:46:21,520
Speaker 1: this as well, is that it's it's a curious thing

822
00:46:21,560 --> 00:46:25,440
Speaker 1: to be so entrenched in the national mindset, because on

823
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:28,520
Speaker 1: one hand, it is not an actual thing you can

824
00:46:28,560 --> 00:46:32,040
Speaker 1: point to, Like you can't go to Boston or Washington,

825
00:46:32,120 --> 00:46:33,879
Speaker 1: d c. And be like, hey, should we Hey, family,

826
00:46:33,920 --> 00:46:35,640
Speaker 1: should we go see the melting pot? There it is.

827
00:46:35,680 --> 00:46:38,880
Speaker 1: We've heard all about the American melting pot. Yeah, behold, No,

828
00:46:39,120 --> 00:46:42,200
Speaker 1: it's not a thing. And on the other hand, it's

829
00:46:42,239 --> 00:46:45,399
Speaker 1: not a proper symbol either. You can't say, oh, let

830
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:48,080
Speaker 1: me let me fish some dollar bills out of my wallet. Oh, yes,

831
00:46:48,080 --> 00:46:50,839
Speaker 1: here's the melting pot right here. You couldn't you if

832
00:46:50,880 --> 00:46:52,799
Speaker 1: you were asked to draw the melting pot, what would

833
00:46:52,840 --> 00:46:56,080
Speaker 1: you draw? You know, It's it's not a concrete symbol

834
00:46:56,160 --> 00:46:58,200
Speaker 1: per se, to the extent that it's a symbol, it's

835
00:46:58,200 --> 00:47:00,920
Speaker 1: only a linguistic one, like the piece is a symbol,

836
00:47:00,960 --> 00:47:04,680
Speaker 1: but it's never depicted. Yeah. So Gleason says that it

837
00:47:04,760 --> 00:47:08,240
Speaker 1: might be more fair to consider it a concept or theory.

838
00:47:09,080 --> 00:47:11,920
Speaker 1: But but he also discusses it just in terms, loosely

839
00:47:11,960 --> 00:47:15,160
Speaker 1: as a symbol throughout the paper. Uh. He points out

840
00:47:15,160 --> 00:47:18,200
Speaker 1: that it's used in many ways as a similar America

841
00:47:18,400 --> 00:47:22,040
Speaker 1: is is like a melting pot. Sometimes it's a metaphor

842
00:47:22,200 --> 00:47:25,320
Speaker 1: America is a melting pot, and sometimes it's a symbol.

843
00:47:25,360 --> 00:47:27,319
Speaker 1: They traveled across the sea to be part of the

844
00:47:27,360 --> 00:47:29,640
Speaker 1: melting pot. So the use of the melting pot is

845
00:47:29,680 --> 00:47:32,319
Speaker 1: a symbol, he says, you know, for the process of

846
00:47:32,440 --> 00:47:38,080
Speaker 1: immigration into American society. This was popularized basically as recently

847
00:47:38,120 --> 00:47:42,120
Speaker 1: as nineteen o eight with Israel zang Wells play that

848
00:47:42,239 --> 00:47:45,560
Speaker 1: was titled The Melting Pot. Uh. So, it's it's another

849
00:47:45,600 --> 00:47:47,320
Speaker 1: interesting thing about it. It's not really that old of

850
00:47:47,360 --> 00:47:50,279
Speaker 1: an idea, and not that the United States is that

851
00:47:50,400 --> 00:47:54,399
Speaker 1: old of an idea either, But the idea itself does

852
00:47:54,520 --> 00:47:58,319
Speaker 1: date back a good bit before u dating back to

853
00:47:58,520 --> 00:48:03,879
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century contemplations of the New American Man, and

854
00:48:03,960 --> 00:48:07,480
Speaker 1: particularly it goes back to the French American writer ja

855
00:48:07,640 --> 00:48:11,200
Speaker 1: Hector St. John de Crevicur, who lived seventeen thirty five

856
00:48:11,280 --> 00:48:16,440
Speaker 1: through eighteen thirteen. Crevicur wrote pro American writings during the Revolution.

857
00:48:16,840 --> 00:48:20,320
Speaker 1: He also opposed slavery, and he touched on the melting

858
00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:24,480
Speaker 1: pot concept in Letters from an American Farmer in seventeen two,

859
00:48:24,880 --> 00:48:27,719
Speaker 1: in which he quote developed or implied all of the

860
00:48:27,719 --> 00:48:31,400
Speaker 1: themes unquote involved in the idea that a new American

861
00:48:31,480 --> 00:48:36,000
Speaker 1: man would be the product of cross cultural fertilization. Right,

862
00:48:36,120 --> 00:48:39,240
Speaker 1: So that would be the sort of what was considered

863
00:48:39,280 --> 00:48:42,560
Speaker 1: a revolutionary idea at the time, that you could build

864
00:48:42,800 --> 00:48:46,480
Speaker 1: a civic culture, you could build a polity on the

865
00:48:46,520 --> 00:48:51,520
Speaker 1: basis of shared ideals rather than shared ethnicity. Yeah, yeah,

866
00:48:51,600 --> 00:48:54,200
Speaker 1: Like he was very much it's at least for for

867
00:48:54,239 --> 00:48:56,480
Speaker 1: a time here in a lot of these writings, was

868
00:48:56,600 --> 00:49:00,320
Speaker 1: very gung ho about what America could be. This idea

869
00:49:00,480 --> 00:49:02,520
Speaker 1: like it's going to be a new thing where we're

870
00:49:02,640 --> 00:49:05,480
Speaker 1: building a new country here and uh and and the

871
00:49:05,680 --> 00:49:09,000
Speaker 1: people that occupied are going to be a new creation

872
00:49:09,160 --> 00:49:10,880
Speaker 1: in a sense, they're going to be created out of

873
00:49:10,920 --> 00:49:13,919
Speaker 1: out of these pre existing elements. And he did use

874
00:49:13,960 --> 00:49:17,640
Speaker 1: the word melt to describe the process quote individuals of

875
00:49:17,680 --> 00:49:21,640
Speaker 1: all nations are melted into a new race of men unquote,

876
00:49:21,680 --> 00:49:25,080
Speaker 1: which at least in some ways sounds futuristic and positive.

877
00:49:25,120 --> 00:49:28,160
Speaker 1: You know, it sounds very plasma pool in his wake,

878
00:49:28,239 --> 00:49:30,759
Speaker 1: though you see other people occasionally use it in a

879
00:49:30,800 --> 00:49:34,839
Speaker 1: different fashion. For instance, DeWitt Clinton, described by Gleason as

880
00:49:34,880 --> 00:49:38,600
Speaker 1: a nativistic congressman, used it in the eighteen forties as

881
00:49:38,600 --> 00:49:42,280
Speaker 1: a criticism of immigrants who did not melt into American

882
00:49:42,320 --> 00:49:45,759
Speaker 1: culture and kept aspects of their own culture. So again,

883
00:49:45,800 --> 00:49:48,479
Speaker 1: already we see melt the idea of the melting pope

884
00:49:48,560 --> 00:49:52,040
Speaker 1: be used positively, like like, hey, everybody, let's melt together

885
00:49:52,080 --> 00:49:54,719
Speaker 1: and become something new. And then here's this other guy

886
00:49:54,800 --> 00:49:57,160
Speaker 1: using it and saying, why aren't people melting? I want

887
00:49:57,160 --> 00:50:00,600
Speaker 1: to see more melting. You're not melting enough. You're not

888
00:50:00,640 --> 00:50:03,439
Speaker 1: melting enough me. Well, no, I'm not melted. I'm I'm

889
00:50:03,520 --> 00:50:05,279
Speaker 1: I'm not in I'm melting, but you you need to

890
00:50:05,280 --> 00:50:08,760
Speaker 1: do some melting. But still it doesn't quite inner general

891
00:50:08,840 --> 00:50:11,200
Speaker 1: usage just yet. Again, not until that play comes around,

892
00:50:11,239 --> 00:50:15,280
Speaker 1: which we'll get to in a second. Um. Ralph Waldo Emerson, however,

893
00:50:15,320 --> 00:50:17,520
Speaker 1: who lived eighteen o three through eighteen eighty two, he

894
00:50:17,560 --> 00:50:21,880
Speaker 1: came close and discussing how Americans America would quote construct

895
00:50:21,880 --> 00:50:24,200
Speaker 1: a new race and new religion, a new state, and

896
00:50:24,280 --> 00:50:26,880
Speaker 1: new literature, and that it would be as as vigorous,

897
00:50:26,960 --> 00:50:29,200
Speaker 1: quote as the new Europe which came out of the

898
00:50:29,239 --> 00:50:32,320
Speaker 1: smelting pot of the Dark Ages. So Gleason points to

899
00:50:32,480 --> 00:50:35,640
Speaker 1: a few different examples there. But the melting Pot again

900
00:50:35,719 --> 00:50:39,399
Speaker 1: doesn't really take off in in in in the in

901
00:50:39,400 --> 00:50:43,440
Speaker 1: in our language until the early twentieth century. In that

902
00:50:43,480 --> 00:50:46,600
Speaker 1: period between the dawn of the twentieth century and the

903
00:50:46,640 --> 00:50:49,920
Speaker 1: start of World War one, UH this, Gleason says, is

904
00:50:49,960 --> 00:50:53,600
Speaker 1: a time when one million immigrants roughly entered the United

905
00:50:53,640 --> 00:50:56,080
Speaker 1: States of America, most of them were from southern and

906
00:50:56,120 --> 00:51:00,279
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe, and the resulting communities in major city these

907
00:51:00,440 --> 00:51:05,160
Speaker 1: were considered by some to be to constitute an immigration problem,

908
00:51:05,160 --> 00:51:07,800
Speaker 1: thus the notion of the melting pot. There was a fear,

909
00:51:08,320 --> 00:51:12,360
Speaker 1: of an express fear of what non assimilating immigrants meant

910
00:51:12,640 --> 00:51:16,040
Speaker 1: for the country. Now. The play itself was a big hit,

911
00:51:16,080 --> 00:51:18,440
Speaker 1: at least with with audiences, apparently not so much with

912
00:51:18,560 --> 00:51:22,759
Speaker 1: the with the theater critics of the day, but The

913
00:51:22,800 --> 00:51:26,040
Speaker 1: plot concerned a Russian Jewish immigrant family and the main

914
00:51:26,160 --> 00:51:29,120
Speaker 1: characters desire to melt into a new future devoid of

915
00:51:29,160 --> 00:51:32,200
Speaker 1: ethnic division and hatred, and it also also concerns the

916
00:51:32,200 --> 00:51:34,360
Speaker 1: plight of the Jewish people in this period of history.

917
00:51:35,160 --> 00:51:38,959
Speaker 1: But in in criticizing the average American of the day,

918
00:51:39,239 --> 00:51:43,400
Speaker 1: it also, you know, proposed that it put forth this

919
00:51:43,480 --> 00:51:48,160
Speaker 1: idea that the melting pot is not something that either

920
00:51:48,280 --> 00:51:50,480
Speaker 1: that has been done or is done, is not part

921
00:51:50,520 --> 00:51:54,080
Speaker 1: of a process that we see completed in any person

922
00:51:54,120 --> 00:51:57,719
Speaker 1: around us, but rather it is an ongoing process that

923
00:51:57,880 --> 00:52:00,520
Speaker 1: we're all going to be reborn out off. If that

924
00:52:00,560 --> 00:52:03,799
Speaker 1: makes sense. So it's not it's so if I, if

925
00:52:03,800 --> 00:52:06,880
Speaker 1: I understand the play correctly, The concept of the melting

926
00:52:06,920 --> 00:52:10,680
Speaker 1: plot employed here is not one of hey, immigrants, go

927
00:52:10,719 --> 00:52:13,080
Speaker 1: get into the melting pot and then come out and

928
00:52:13,080 --> 00:52:14,799
Speaker 1: then you can be with me. It's more like we

929
00:52:14,840 --> 00:52:17,200
Speaker 1: are all in the melting pot. We are all melting

930
00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:22,439
Speaker 1: into something better and and new. Right, Not an exhortation

931
00:52:22,520 --> 00:52:25,040
Speaker 1: of like you're not melting properly, but just saying like

932
00:52:25,120 --> 00:52:29,160
Speaker 1: it's descriptive. The melting pot is what happens. Yes, it

933
00:52:29,280 --> 00:52:31,879
Speaker 1: is an ongoing thing that is had it is the

934
00:52:31,880 --> 00:52:35,080
Speaker 1: the ongoing transformation of what it means to be an

935
00:52:35,120 --> 00:52:38,200
Speaker 1: American now. Gleason points out that Theodore Roosevelt loved it,

936
00:52:38,360 --> 00:52:40,440
Speaker 1: but he didn't like the lines in there about Americans

937
00:52:40,480 --> 00:52:44,480
Speaker 1: being lax on divorce or public corruption. So the playwright

938
00:52:44,520 --> 00:52:50,240
Speaker 1: took it out. He's like, okay, fair enough to happy yeah, um,

939
00:52:50,280 --> 00:52:53,760
Speaker 1: but you know, it's it also seems like the play

940
00:52:54,600 --> 00:52:57,640
Speaker 1: carried with it assert you know, divisive interpretations depending on

941
00:52:57,640 --> 00:53:00,120
Speaker 1: who was thinking about the play and was all so

942
00:53:00,200 --> 00:53:03,759
Speaker 1: then thinking about immigration, you know, is it preaching too

943
00:53:03,880 --> 00:53:06,879
Speaker 1: much conformity on the part of the immigrant or too

944
00:53:06,960 --> 00:53:10,000
Speaker 1: much transformation on the part of the nation. And I

945
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:12,160
Speaker 1: I guess in that respect, it sounds like the play

946
00:53:12,400 --> 00:53:15,520
Speaker 1: did what what good art should do, right. I mean,

947
00:53:15,560 --> 00:53:18,480
Speaker 1: it's it's maybe pissing off everybody to a certain extent

948
00:53:18,640 --> 00:53:23,239
Speaker 1: or making everybody think about, like, what what's going on

949
00:53:23,320 --> 00:53:25,920
Speaker 1: in the country. Well, if I'm understanding correctly, I mean

950
00:53:25,960 --> 00:53:29,799
Speaker 1: it maybe sort of assuming something that sounds kind of

951
00:53:29,800 --> 00:53:32,640
Speaker 1: ahead of its time, which is that the cultural assimilation

952
00:53:32,680 --> 00:53:38,200
Speaker 1: of immigrant communities into into a new country is not

953
00:53:38,280 --> 00:53:41,560
Speaker 1: necessarily what what the you know, the nativist that the

954
00:53:41,640 --> 00:53:45,040
Speaker 1: angry finger waggers are saying that you're not assimilating good enough,

955
00:53:45,600 --> 00:53:48,600
Speaker 1: that like that they need to become like the nativist

956
00:53:48,640 --> 00:53:52,560
Speaker 1: finger waggers. Instead, it's the nativist finger waggers and the

957
00:53:52,600 --> 00:53:56,160
Speaker 1: new immigrants are all going to in the future assimilate

958
00:53:56,280 --> 00:54:00,479
Speaker 1: into this this common thing that is yet to come. Yeah,

959
00:54:00,480 --> 00:54:03,160
Speaker 1: I think so. Yeah, the idea that it's it's it's

960
00:54:03,200 --> 00:54:06,319
Speaker 1: something that is happening and will happen. Uh Yeah, as

961
00:54:06,360 --> 00:54:08,480
Speaker 1: opposed to this this thing that has supposed to have

962
00:54:08,520 --> 00:54:10,880
Speaker 1: already occurred. But but it it does get back to

963
00:54:10,920 --> 00:54:12,799
Speaker 1: a lot of what we discussed already about like how

964
00:54:12,800 --> 00:54:15,759
Speaker 1: we think about melting, both in its positive and negative connotations.

965
00:54:16,080 --> 00:54:18,680
Speaker 1: You know, if I'm melting, am I gonna lose myself?

966
00:54:19,040 --> 00:54:21,360
Speaker 1: Will I be hurt when I become soft and malleable?

967
00:54:21,560 --> 00:54:25,000
Speaker 1: I am? Am I ready for change? You know? Uh?

968
00:54:25,040 --> 00:54:27,000
Speaker 1: And and as Gleason points out, you know there's a

969
00:54:27,000 --> 00:54:29,360
Speaker 1: lot of variety and how the melting pot is presented,

970
00:54:29,840 --> 00:54:31,759
Speaker 1: and and there are a lot of questions and all

971
00:54:31,800 --> 00:54:33,759
Speaker 1: the time about what exactly you're trying to say, like

972
00:54:33,960 --> 00:54:36,840
Speaker 1: it are we talking about a biological blending? Like is

973
00:54:36,880 --> 00:54:40,719
Speaker 1: it about you know, different ethnicities becoming one. Uh is

974
00:54:40,760 --> 00:54:44,640
Speaker 1: it a cultural blending that we're talking about. Is it

975
00:54:44,719 --> 00:54:46,960
Speaker 1: is it all of the culture or just like aspects

976
00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:49,840
Speaker 1: of the culture. I mean again, it depends on who's

977
00:54:50,280 --> 00:54:52,759
Speaker 1: who's trotting it out really, Uh, you know, is it

978
00:54:52,760 --> 00:54:55,360
Speaker 1: describing something that used to take place, something that is

979
00:54:55,400 --> 00:54:57,680
Speaker 1: taking place, something that needs to take place, or is

980
00:54:57,719 --> 00:55:00,200
Speaker 1: taking place with with a few, with the future in mind,

981
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:04,600
Speaker 1: and etcetera. Uh So I found it all very very um,

982
00:55:04,920 --> 00:55:08,040
Speaker 1: very intriguing to think about. It makes me even less

983
00:55:08,080 --> 00:55:11,080
Speaker 1: likely to use the term melting pot in my own

984
00:55:11,120 --> 00:55:15,000
Speaker 1: conversations unless i'm you know, uh talking with somebody about

985
00:55:15,040 --> 00:55:18,279
Speaker 1: the concept itself. Like it seems it seems like it's

986
00:55:18,320 --> 00:55:21,480
Speaker 1: just too um it's too vague and too open to

987
00:55:21,520 --> 00:55:26,959
Speaker 1: interpretation and also uh too too easy to misuse. Yeah,

988
00:55:27,000 --> 00:55:29,080
Speaker 1: you could look at it that way. And I gotta say,

989
00:55:29,080 --> 00:55:31,920
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've ever really been somebody who

990
00:55:32,400 --> 00:55:34,759
Speaker 1: used this image myself. But on the other hand, as

991
00:55:35,160 --> 00:55:37,920
Speaker 1: as somebody who you know, believes in the project of

992
00:55:38,000 --> 00:55:42,400
Speaker 1: multiculturalism and uh and believes like immigration is good for

993
00:55:42,440 --> 00:55:46,240
Speaker 1: a nation, um, I I do think it's also useful

994
00:55:46,280 --> 00:55:50,640
Speaker 1: to have imagery, like having symbols and imagery really does

995
00:55:50,760 --> 00:55:54,040
Speaker 1: help an idea take root. It's it's possible that this

996
00:55:54,120 --> 00:55:57,080
Speaker 1: similar imagery is not the best symbol or imagery. I

997
00:55:57,080 --> 00:55:59,600
Speaker 1: don't know, because it's certainly right that it has like

998
00:55:59,680 --> 00:56:02,799
Speaker 1: ton of ambiguous meanings. But when you're talking about a

999
00:56:02,840 --> 00:56:06,360
Speaker 1: trend as big as uh, you know, trying to form

1000
00:56:06,400 --> 00:56:10,360
Speaker 1: a multicultural polity, I guess there probably is going to

1001
00:56:10,440 --> 00:56:14,520
Speaker 1: be a lot of ambiguity in in whatever imagery you use. Yeah, yeah,

1002
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:16,759
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's it's asking a lot I guess

1003
00:56:16,800 --> 00:56:19,359
Speaker 1: of a of a symbol or metaphor to really sum

1004
00:56:19,480 --> 00:56:22,520
Speaker 1: up um some of what this this uh, this symbol

1005
00:56:22,600 --> 00:56:25,080
Speaker 1: or metaphor has called on to do. But again I

1006
00:56:25,080 --> 00:56:27,760
Speaker 1: found it interesting, especially again just in terms of thinking

1007
00:56:27,840 --> 00:56:30,760
Speaker 1: once more about melting as this thing that has positive

1008
00:56:30,800 --> 00:56:35,560
Speaker 1: and negative connotations that ultimately is about how we think

1009
00:56:35,560 --> 00:56:40,080
Speaker 1: about change in our lives, uh, in in the world, uh,

1010
00:56:40,120 --> 00:56:44,080
Speaker 1: you know, political change, societal change, cultural change, biological change.

1011
00:56:44,280 --> 00:56:46,719
Speaker 1: I gotta say, when you proposed a Melt movie episode,

1012
00:56:46,760 --> 00:56:48,799
Speaker 1: this is not the direction I expected it to go.

1013
00:56:48,840 --> 00:56:51,600
Speaker 1: But this has been really interesting. Yeah, I I enjoyed

1014
00:56:51,640 --> 00:56:53,479
Speaker 1: it as well. I don't think I ended. I thought

1015
00:56:53,480 --> 00:56:55,600
Speaker 1: that we'd end up talking about the you know, the

1016
00:56:55,640 --> 00:56:59,080
Speaker 1: substance of America uh so much. Um. That was not

1017
00:56:59,160 --> 00:57:01,640
Speaker 1: the intent then active the attempt, if it was any intent,

1018
00:57:01,680 --> 00:57:05,279
Speaker 1: it was to not talk about anything political or or

1019
00:57:05,719 --> 00:57:09,200
Speaker 1: or America centrics. So but here we are, we have

1020
00:57:09,280 --> 00:57:11,880
Speaker 1: melted into it, and I'll proudly melt up next to

1021
00:57:11,920 --> 00:57:15,160
Speaker 1: you and melt hers still today are there songs about

1022
00:57:15,200 --> 00:57:23,120
Speaker 1: melting um in the Sopranos. There is a metal band,

1023
00:57:23,880 --> 00:57:27,640
Speaker 1: uh that has a song called melt. I know, there's

1024
00:57:27,720 --> 00:57:30,720
Speaker 1: there's a there's a Calm Truise album called Galactic Melt,

1025
00:57:31,240 --> 00:57:33,600
Speaker 1: which I think is nice because his his sound has

1026
00:57:33,640 --> 00:57:35,760
Speaker 1: a very like that that I think it sums up

1027
00:57:35,760 --> 00:57:38,440
Speaker 1: with something about it sound like something galactic, something that

1028
00:57:38,560 --> 00:57:42,080
Speaker 1: is like spacey and specific. But the melting aspect of

1029
00:57:42,160 --> 00:57:46,840
Speaker 1: it has implies a kind of you know, biological uh

1030
00:57:47,280 --> 00:57:50,080
Speaker 1: you know, a morphous quality that's there as well, sort

1031
00:57:50,120 --> 00:57:54,280
Speaker 1: of like it's it's biology and technology fused together into

1032
00:57:54,280 --> 00:57:58,600
Speaker 1: one sound. Shoegaze type music has some good sonic melting

1033
00:57:58,680 --> 00:58:01,320
Speaker 1: qualities I would I would consider like my Bloody Valentine

1034
00:58:01,320 --> 00:58:04,680
Speaker 1: and a very melty band. Yeah, I guess a vapor

1035
00:58:04,720 --> 00:58:06,720
Speaker 1: wave in it in its own way. Like just the

1036
00:58:06,960 --> 00:58:11,560
Speaker 1: word vapor wave implies phase transition as well, but different,

1037
00:58:11,760 --> 00:58:16,360
Speaker 1: not a different one, not melting, but sublimation. Yeah, and

1038
00:58:16,640 --> 00:58:18,600
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's something we really explore that

1039
00:58:18,720 --> 00:58:21,360
Speaker 1: much in our our horror movies. So I don't know

1040
00:58:21,480 --> 00:58:24,560
Speaker 1: what happens when the mall turns not from a solid

1041
00:58:24,560 --> 00:58:27,280
Speaker 1: into a liquid, but a solid directly into a gas.

1042
00:58:28,040 --> 00:58:30,880
Speaker 1: Then you get an eternal loop of the chorus from

1043
00:58:31,360 --> 00:58:36,200
Speaker 1: Take These Broken Wings So real quick? Is that? You know?

1044
00:58:36,320 --> 00:58:38,800
Speaker 1: Is that what happens in um the Avengers movies, the

1045
00:58:38,840 --> 00:58:42,000
Speaker 1: whole fingersnap thing a are are people turning into vapor

1046
00:58:42,080 --> 00:58:43,960
Speaker 1: or they just turning into ash? And that I don't know.

1047
00:58:44,200 --> 00:58:47,680
Speaker 1: I haven't seen those movies. I watched the first one.

1048
00:58:47,760 --> 00:58:50,960
Speaker 1: The listeners will have to that and being exposed for

1049
00:58:51,000 --> 00:58:54,120
Speaker 1: the millionth time is somebody who I don't. I'm not

1050
00:58:54,160 --> 00:58:56,720
Speaker 1: in the marble thing. I don't really. Well, you'll come

1051
00:58:56,760 --> 00:58:59,200
Speaker 1: back for the next Blade film, I hope. Oh, I

1052
00:58:59,200 --> 00:59:01,560
Speaker 1: guess you know what. I still haven't seen Blade three,

1053
00:59:01,680 --> 00:59:05,680
Speaker 1: so uh, well, it has one good line in it,

1054
00:59:05,760 --> 00:59:08,160
Speaker 1: but I can send you a clip of that and

1055
00:59:08,200 --> 00:59:10,640
Speaker 1: then you're good to go. Okay, alright, Well, We're gonna

1056
00:59:10,640 --> 00:59:12,920
Speaker 1: go ahead and close it out here. This was this

1057
00:59:13,000 --> 00:59:15,120
Speaker 1: was melting. This says the episode is going to close

1058
00:59:15,160 --> 00:59:20,120
Speaker 1: out this year's Halloween festivities. But don't worry. We're you know,

1059
00:59:20,160 --> 00:59:25,080
Speaker 1: we're coming back next week and it's gonna be new topics. Uh,

1060
00:59:25,400 --> 00:59:28,200
Speaker 1: perhaps a little less halloweeny, but just as h as

1061
00:59:28,200 --> 00:59:32,000
Speaker 1: exciting and contemplated in theory. Anyway, Well, we'll see where

1062
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Speaker 1: it goes. We're just gonna see where the rest of

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00:59:33,200 --> 00:59:35,520
Speaker 1: the year Texas. In the meantime, if you want to

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00:59:35,560 --> 00:59:37,439
Speaker 1: check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,

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Speaker 1: you can find us wherever you get your podcast and

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Speaker 1: wherever that happens to be. If you have the ability

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Speaker 1: to do so, just rate, review and subscribe. You can

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Speaker 1: always find us such stuff to Blow your Mind dot

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Speaker 1: com that will shoot you over to the I heart

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Speaker 1: listing for this show, and somewhere on there you get

1071
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Speaker 1: define it for yourself. There's a store button and that

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Speaker 1: will take you to our t shirt store where if

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Speaker 1: you want to buy a T shirt or a sticker

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Speaker 1: or a bag or what have you, face mask with

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Speaker 1: our logo on it or some sort of monster you

1076
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Speaker 1: can buy that there and learn to fly again and

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01:00:07,320 --> 01:00:11,440
Speaker 1: learn to live so free. Yes, all right, uh huge,

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Speaker 1: Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

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Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

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Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

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Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

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Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

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Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my

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Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

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Speaker 1: wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. No